Lise Haller Baggesen

Lise Haller Baggesen The Mothernist’s Audio Guide to Laguna Gloria Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Mothernism, on view in the Gatehouse Gallery through May 22, 2016. The Mothernist’s Audio Guide to Laguna Gloria is a newly commissioned work of art by Lise Haller Baggesen. Go on an intimate walk with the artist, who ,through her own musings, provides new ways to see, hear and think about the sculptures, gardens, and history of Laguna Gloria. IMAGE: Lise Haller Baggesen, Mothernism, 2013-ongoing. Audio-installation. Installation view (in action), Lise Haller Baggesen :Mothernism, The Contemporary Austin - Gatehouse Gallery at the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria, 2016. Artwork © Lise Haller Baggesen. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons. 1 The Mothernist’s Audio Guide to Laguna Gloria Track 1: Intro (Villa and Wishing Well) Dear, Let’s go for a walk. Walk with me Like lovers do Talk with me Like lovers do1 Pretend for a moment that we can walk together, like lovers do, or like a mother and her child –who are also lovers, but of a different kind. Or even, like walking a little old lady across the street— I’ll let you decide who is who—a loving gesture of yet another order; the kindness of strangers. What more could we wish for? Let’s think about that, while we walk toward the Wishing Well. Exit through the front door and turn right. Turn right again around the corner of the villa past the gated archway and onto the flagstone path. The wishing well is tucked away between the trees on your left, overlooking the lagoon. It bears a dedication “In honor of our daughters Mary Allen, Lizzie and Kate.” I don’t know who put this plaque here, but since this is The Mothernist’s Audio Guide to Laguna Gloria, and the wishes of mothers and daughters will be a recurring theme, I thought I’d mention it. The Wishing Well marks the division between the upper garden—the beautiful one—and the lower garden, the picturesque. 1 Eurythmics, “Here Comes the Rain Again,” Touch (RCA, 1984). 2 According to the “Cultural Landscape Report” for Laguna Gloria, In 1757, British philosopher Edmund Burke introduced the concept of the ‘beautiful’ in landscape painting and gardens. For Burke, the ‘beautiful’ embodied classical balance and order and its effect was smoothness, restfulness, harmony and rationality.2 These principles, we might call them “Apollonian,” are typical of the upper garden at Laguna Gloria, with its smooth lawns, symmetrical flowerbeds, and Italianate ornamentation. In contrast, the lower garden is guided by rather more “Dionysian” impulses. We will hear more about that , as we move along, but first, let’s make a wish, for our walk: That we may let ourselves be guided by Apollonian and Dionysian principles both, and that we will engage with our senses and intellect alike: sentient beings, being sentient. Since that is what we are, and since we are, for the purpose of this walk, Garden Lovers, let us now walk toward the Temple of Love. Stay on the flagstone path and walk toward the low balustrade overlooking the lower garden, a little further on. From there we will continue our tour. 2 Catherine O’Connor and Julie Levin, Cultural Landscape Report for Austin Museum of Art – Laguna Gloria (unpublished, commissioned internal report, Austin, TX: Land Design Studio, 1999), 19. 3 Track 2 Gravel Path: Now walk down the stairs to your left and continue listening, as you walk along the gravel path, meandering between the trees underneath a string of party lights. While walking toward the Temple of Love, consider the idea of love as a deity one can worship. How to worship in the Temple of Love? The Temple of Love now mainly functions as a site for wedding ceremonies, but matrimony is only one way of worshipping, of course. Some may say that matrimony is the end of love, and others may say it is only the beginning; and I will say with Kierkegaard—another great lover of walking and thinking—that you may regret it either way. Rock musician Nick Cave is a pious man who worships a great deal in the temple of love, in- and outside of matrimony. A family man, he is also an adulterer, a junkie, and a poet (a Dionysian by any other name). I think it would be fair to say, that Nick Cave has had his share of regrets in this life, but also that his experience of love extends beyond matrimony, into the expanded field between Eros, Caritas, and Thanatos. When you lay yourself down in that field with somebody, they may walk all over you, but they may also walk with you till the end of the world. So, when Nick Cave sings: Thank you Girl Tha-ank you Girl I’ll love you till the end of the world…6 Which end of the world does he mean? Keep walking till you arrive at the Temple of Love. Take a seat, and make yourself comfortable and we will take it from there. 6 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World,” Until the End of the World film soundtrack (Warner Brothers, 1991). 4 Track 3:Temple of Love and Texas Gates The Temple of Love overlooks the glorious lagoon, after which Clara Driscoll named her beloved property, Laguna Gloria. Sitting here, you could almost imagine yourself being at the end of the world. At another end of the world from here is another Laguna Gloria; within it lies the city of Venice. In Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice his protagonist Herr von Aschenbach trips head over heels in a snare of the eye—as incarnated in the young boy Tadzio. Unable (or unwilling) to avert his gaze from the graceful youngster, he decides to linger a little longer. Around him the city empties as rumors spread of impending disaster; a poignant smell—at first brushed aside as precautions against the hazards of tropical tempest the “Sirocco”—turns out to be a malodorous disinfectant, used to mask the pungent stink of cholera. In Mann’s description the disease becomes an almost sentient being: Its source was the hot, moist swamps of the delta of the Ganges, where it bred in the mephitic air of that primeval island-jungle, among whose bamboo thickets the tiger crouches, where life of every sort flourishes in rankest abundance, and only man avoids the spot.7 From here, the disease carried westward onboard Syrian merchant ships to Mediterranean ports of a Europe trembling with fear. 7 Thomas Mann, Death in Venice [1912], 24grammata.com: http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Mann-death-in- venice-24grammata.com_.pdf (accessed 20 December 2015), 35. 5 Reading this story today, a hundred years later, it is hard not to draw parallels to the way fear and loathing are cultivated across Europe, portraying a “plague” of refugees, washed ashore on Mediterranean coasts. As far north as my motherland Denmark, politicians quiver at the thought. In response to the humanitarian crisis, the Danish minister of immigration placed adverts in international papers, warning potential asylum seekers to expect to be greeted not with an outreached hand, but with a clenched fist. Since then, a law was passed allowing Danish authorities to seize valuables carried by refugees entering the country. In protest, international art star Ai Weiwei withdrew his work from a major exhibition in Denmark and instead released a self-portrait in which he poses as a drowned Syrian toddler. His misguided attempt at solidarity looked more like a misguided attempt at self-promotion, but perhaps underscored the strained relationship between the art world and the real, and the universality of our shared predicament. Universally, the defense of ever tightening fists is that “we cannot save the whole world.” Alas. If we cannot save the whole world, the whole world cannot be saved. The rhetoric of European neoliberals does not differ much from that of their American counterparts, Donald Trump amongst them. His presidential campaign includes plans to cleanse the U.S. of immigrants, and a plot to force American Muslim citizens to carry identity cards. If this all sounds uncannily similar to legislations passed on Jews in interbellum Europe, it is because it is. But, as Nick Cave points out: Some things we plan We sit and we invent and we plot and cook up Others are work of inspiration, of poetry8 Migration can be simultaneously inspired and invented, plotted and poetic. Cooked up, consumed, and all consuming. 8 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “(I'll Love You) Till the End of the World,” Until the End of the World film soundtrack (Warner Brothers, 1991). 6 Similarly, matrimony can be a fortress, a gated community or a golden skyscraper—or a passport to travel together till the end of the world. 7 At this end of the world, Clara Driscoll’s Temple of Love is guarded by (a replica of) the Capitol Gates of Texas, but that doesn’t mean she did not let love in. A photograph from the museum’s archive shows a small group of people posing in front of these very gates: an elderly gentleman and a young woman holding an infant. Who are those people? They belong to the Galvan family, who resided on the premises between the 1920s and the 1940s. Nazario Galvan is the name of Clara Driscoll’s gardener, who helped her implement every detail of her grand plans for landscaping the estate.

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